In 2003, when asked by the writer Bernard McLafferty for advice as he embarked on his first short film, (\u201cBye-Child,\u201d nominated for a BAFTA) I replied that the director\u2019s job was to make decisions no matter how trivial, otherwise someone else would soon make them for you. Perhaps I\u2019ve been looking in the wrong places but advice on directing is in short supply. Where some directors focus on the actors\u2019 performance, others concentrate on aesthetics \u2013 the look and tone of a film. Where some are technically literate, others rely on the wisdom of the crew. No two ever take the same approach.<\/p>\n
If there\u2019s been any plusses to making this film entirely on my own it\u2019s having the ability and freedom to make changes. On a conventional film this means a complex backtracking because the smallest edit impacts on the whole, obliging me to return to a post-production house. At least by shooting on HD I don\u2019t need to worry about a neg cut. Mostly the changes were made after testing it on the big screen, first at the Glasgow Film Theatre and more recently at my local Cineworld where I decided several audio cues were too prominent and that generally the storytelling would benefit from replacing one or two specific shots.<\/p>\n
The task complete, the film\u2019s first screening is imminent. For a long time I\u2019ve wrestled with the decision of where to host a private showing because over the past two years \u201cVoyageuse\u201d has attracted a small band of supporters asking when it will screen locally. My reply \u2013 that a rep cinema needs to be willing to show it \u2013 is met with incomprehension even by those in a position to influence such a decision. It\u2019s moot, of course, because until I exhaust the festival route all bets are off, as is VOD.<\/p>\n
In weighing the decision of where to show my film it occurs to me that I\u2019m the only<\/u> person \u2013 and certainly the only woman \u2013 to have made an indigenous narrative feature in Scotland in the last couple of years, if not longer. It’s quite a damning thought which, if it were theatre, say, would be declared a national scandal. Modest as it is, the existence of my film should be a cause for celebration but it raises a fundamental question: why is Scotland so uniquely ill-equipped when it comes to making and promoting its own films? For decades I\u2019ve struggled for an answer only to conclude \u2013 to quote Diogenes \u2013 \u2018I\u2019m practising disappointment.\u2019<\/p>\n
The lost cause that is Scottish film was confirmed to me last week, when I attended a civic reception hosted by the Glasgow Film Festival to celebrate Canadian filmmakers. Here I was introduced to the American producer and doyenne of indie cinema, Christine Vachon<\/a> in town to deliver a Masterclass. During our conversation, as she talked of the advantages of the European film subsidy, I informed her that my fourth feature film was unencumbered by public money, citing the New Yorker\u2019s film critic, Richard Brody\u2019s view on independent filmmaking not as a matter of financing but of urgency and its experiential value to the maker. By which point I noted Christine’s eyes glaze over.<\/p>\n With a surfeit of time to reflect I\u2019ve had to confront profound truths about my own identity and about why with \u201cVoyageuse\u201d I chose to portray an older, educated, middle-class Englishwoman whose background could not be more different from my own. My decision involved a measure of calculation: to make a film not readily identifiable as Scottish in order to improve its chances of finding an audience in the wider world. This is informed by a simple fact: given that no Scottish director can progress or sustain a career in their own country, the choice they face is to either quit, die or leave.<\/p>\n The departure list is long: John Grierson, Alexander Mackendrick, Norman McLaren, Donald Cammell, Bill Douglas, Bill Forsyth, Michael Caton-Jones, Gillies MacKinnon, Kevin Macdonald, Paul McGuigan, Saul Metzstein, Lynne Ramsay, David Mackenzie to name a few.<\/p>\n Perhaps I\u2019m suffering from post-production blues but never have I felt so pessimistic nor detached from my native land. Making a film \u2013 any film \u2013 is nigh on impossible when the current tactic (as opposed to strategy) of the Scottish Government, its arm\u2019s-length agencies, national broadcasters \u2013 is to ignore indigenous filmmakers while extending largesse and exposure to large-scale film and TV productions who parachute in, lured by the landscape, subsidies and tax breaks and cheap labour. Likewise cinemas – both multiplex and arthouse – don’t give local films a fair shake (see my last post) and apart from a few academics, cultural commentators either don’t care or don’t exist.<\/p>\n The picture is further blurred by the ongoing sideshow of the lack of a film studio, an issue irrelevant to homegrown producers when even the most modest budget takes years to raise, making a studio unaffordable given the cost of hire, and of construction, standing, lighting and striking sets. Speaking as an ex-production designer, I should know.<\/p>\n At another level, my deepening malaise with Scottish film isn’t only about money or facilities, it’s about the mindset that keeps the nation tethered and cringing. The stagnant, rock-bottom level of production speaks to a lack of ambition: professionally, technically and creatively. In Scottish film the narrative hasn\u2019t evolved much since George Orwell\u2019s description of class stereotypes in his essay, \u201cBoys\u2019 Weeklies\u201d (1940) where \u201cthe working classes only enter into the Gem<\/em> and Magnet<\/em> as comics or semi-villains.\u201d Missing from that list is the caricature of the wily local underdog who outwits the authoritarian incomer, as seen in \u201cThe Maggie\u201d (1954) and \u201cLocal Hero\u201d (1983). If the middle classes exist in Scotland you wouldn’t know it by going to the pictures.<\/p>\n Rather than present characters as complex individuals forced to the limits of their usual behaviours in pursuit of a goal, Scottish film \u2013 be it indigenous or made by Hollywood \u2013 tends to portray people through exterior, symptomatic signifiers that ad nauseum present Scots on screen as drunkards, junkies, victims, violent, sick, poor and ill-educated because it\u2019s easier to elicit pity or raise a cheap laugh than it is to interrogate – and understand – the lives of normal folk in less-than-normal circumstances.<\/p>\n By contrast, quietly undramatic (and middle-class) English films such as \u201c45 Years\u201d (2015) or the upcoming \u201cOn Chesil Beach\u201d (2017) could never be produced in Scotland. Among other, complex factors, a dearth of an establishment willing to endorse, finance and promote Scottish film condemns its makers to produce fewer films than any other Western nation. In a pre-Brexit, pre-Indyref2 scenario this dire state of affairs speaks to an overweening lack of confidence that augurs ill for the culture-at-large.<\/p>\n I should worry. Over the coming months I\u2019ll know whether \u201cVoyageuse\u201d can find an audience. If it succeeds then perhaps my faith in filmmaking can be restored. If not, then it\u2019s no great loss to cinema \u2013 or in my case, the taxpayer. At least my hands are clean. In the end I’ve decided to screen privately, of course – at the BFI, Stephen Street, London at 6.00pm on March 1, by which time I\u2019ll have a better idea about its prospects – and my own.<\/p>\n The above image is a frame grab from the film, shot by me in 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2003, when asked by the writer Bernard McLafferty for advice as he embarked on his first short film, (\u201cBye-Child,\u201d nominated for a BAFTA) I replied that the director\u2019s job was to make decisions no ...more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2041,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13,19,44,105,110],"class_list":["post-1086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-bfi","tag-christine-vachon","tag-female-filmmaking","tag-richard-brody","tag-scottish-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/voyageuse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/voyageuse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/voyageuse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/voyageuse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/voyageuse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/voyageuse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1923,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/voyageuse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086\/revisions\/1923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/voyageuse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/voyageuse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/voyageuse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/voyageuse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}